


The Thing About The Quilts

by alexiel_neesan



Series: The Cheese 'Verse (ABANDONNED) [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alpha Derek, Derek Feels, Derek has a dog, Gen, Magic, Pack Feels, Post-Season/Series 02 AU, Quilts, Sharing a Bed, odessa the german shepherd, storage units and memories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:58:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexiel_neesan/pseuds/alexiel_neesan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek finds the storage space his family had been renting for years roughly at the same time he gets the keys to the finished house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The first encounter

**Author's Note:**

> The Cheese 'Verse is an in-progress non-linear, non-chronological series, in which there is communication, a larger magical community, pack feels, cheese making and Farmers' Markets, almost nothing hurt and Derek has a good life.
> 
> Inspired by Tyler Hoechlin's [own feels about Derek Hale's character](http://cheeseverse.tumblr.com/post/55928606485/i-think-at-the-end-of-the-day-weve-always-really).

Derek finds the storage space his family had been renting for years roughly at the same time he gets the keys to the finished house (he’ll try calling it the House as much as he can, even with Isaac and Scott insisting that it’s a Farm, and him replying it’s not one until the goats arrive and the vegetable garden is doing better than it’s currently doing). It’s a storage space like there are all over the country along the highways, concrete boxes of varying sizes with garage-like doors and heavy locks. The owner of the place actually tracked him down, because it’s a ten years rent box and it’s due for renewal, because the man’s cousin was one of the contractors who did the electricity in the house, and because Beacon Hills sometimes is just that small of a town.

His storage space is one of the largest of the lot. At first glance, it looks like the first floor of his house could fit inside. He doesn’t remember ever coming here before, curious about what’s inside at the same time he’s dreading it. The owner chats about the kind of things people leave in those, about a TV show showing this stuff and the crazy amounts of money people make on them, breaks the lock with deadbolt cutters— then he turns around, pats Derek’s shoulder.

"All yours, son. I’ll be in the office if you need anything."

Derek nods. He thinks he should have brought someone with him— no, not _someone_ , he should have brought Boyd. He’d be the steady, clear-headed one at the moment. Derek could use some of that, and he hasn’t opened the door yet. He should have brought Odessa— she would have been whining and head-butting him by that point, frustrated with him not moving when there were new places to explore. He closes his hand, half expecting to feel warm fur. He thinks he should bring his pick-up around, already. He thinks he should have brought a new lock, maybe.

He ends up opening the door up in one fast move, not quite looking inside, thinks that Stiles and Erica would call that “ripping the band-aid.” He needs to stop imagining what his pack would say if they were there to motivate himself.

The box is slightly smaller than it looked like from the outside. It’s also less packed than he was expecting— hoping, fearing. There are cardboard boxes along the walls piled on wooden pallets, away from the floor, what he guesses is furniture wrapped in plastic sheets in the middle. It doesn’t quite smell of anything, just concrete, residual dampness, wood and plastic. He was afraid it’d smell like pack and home faded away.

He walks in further, squinting from the lack of light. He starts taking corners of plastic sheeting at random, figuring out what’s what, trying to guess why it was relegated here instead of in the basement or the attic when the old house was still up. He very much doubt he’ll find anything of great importance after he unveils a table with a off-turquoise formica top that he almost remembers seeing in the kitchen when his grandmother was still alive, after the row of packages in the back ends up being the kitchen cupboards to match. There is a carefully wrapped full dining set with faded pink and gold flowers in a cardboard box, wooden blocks and toys he has no memory of ever seeing in another.

There’s a crib and two boxes of baby clothes vacuum-sealed in it. Everything looks quite old, the colors faded and the lot smelling of mothballs. He— Derek goes to sit down outside the box for a moment, misses Odessa’s reassuring presence fiercely.

He already knows he’s bringing most of the unit back to the house— all they have was what was in the loft: Isaac’s bed and the few things he kept from his house, two chairs, and Derek's mattress. The plastic plates and cups and the bags where they kept their clothes don't count. The rest wasn’t worth being brought in, destroyed beyond repair (the table), falling apart cheap (his bed) or covered in blood stains (the couch and most of the main room).

The quilts and the trunks they come in aren’t part of the first trip, or even the second or third. Derek finds them a week after he opens the unit, a week of taking box after box and unpacking pieces of lives he had never known on floors still dusty from construction.

There’s a lot that go right back into boxes for donations— the baby clothes, old novels with yellowing pages, knickknacks he has no interest in and no space for. The pack drops in now and then, not always all together. He tells them to grab what they want, if there’s anything. Not much could be used in dorm rooms, which is what most of them are thinking about. Mrs. McCall —”Stop that and call me Melissa, Derek.”— finds serving platters. Stiles and Erica go through the web to tell him exactly how much he could have made selling the unit to vintage stores and other online auctions. He doesn’t listen to them and keep the formica table and the wonky cupboards, the full dining set with the faded flowers, the sagging couch Isaac drapes bed-sheets over to look presentable and the “real Tiffany lamp, oh my god Derek, do you have any idea how much those can rack up?” “Fifty bucks.” “What— Erica, what are you doing, help me out here.” “Fifty bucks, Batman, it’s not a real one. See? Plastic.”

Derek has to have the discussion about why he’s not keeping everything only once, thankfully.

When he brings the quilts in, the sun is setting low, and he left the unit empty behind him. The owner wished him good luck. Derek thinks he’ll go back there, if he ever needs extra storage. How far he has come, he thinks, that he has a house, almost a job, a dog, a pack, a future in which he can imagine needing storage space.

There had been something, when he had opened the trunks the first time. He can feel it again, as the quilts are unfolded reverently in the living room. Isaac and Boyd feel it too. The one under Derek’s hands— it’s warm, like taking a nap with his arms wrapped around Odessa, his face in her fur. But Odessa is on the other side of the room, quietly attentive, her head resting on her front leg.

"What are those?" The quilt Boyd has his hands on is nothing but squares, tiny squares stitched together in patterns Derek has seen before but never experienced first hand.

"What does it feel like?" Derek asks, and Isaac and Boyd look up sharply at him, brows furrowed, then at each other. The quilt in Isaac’s hands doesn’t seem to have a pattern, pieces of colors thrown against each other. 

"It tingles," says Isaac. "A little like pins and needles. Like pins and needles when I sit down to play video games with Scott and Stiles for too long."

Derek nods.

"It’s- it feels like Erica’s jacket and petrichor," says Boyd.

"Keep the ones you have." Derek gets up. The one in his hands will go on his bed. There are more than the three they choose— enough to have one in each room, on each bed the house will ultimately have. "They’re protection. There’s magic in the patterns."  



	2. A brief interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which mornings at Derek's house sometimes feature terrible romance novels.

“Oh my god! Erica!” 

The exclamation was followed by loud laughter— Erica’s, as it were. Derek had his head hidden in his crossed arms on the kitchen table, the one he had taken from the storage unit, in all its formica top, corners used and dinged, and one wobbly leg glory. Odessa, sprawled in the sun rising through the window, didn’t react to the bursts of sounds, and kept her eyes closed.

Erica tugged up her quilt, solid block of colors chasing each other around a central star pattern, over her shoulders, and waved the book in the air with one hand. Her nails were midnight blue with a gold line through this week. “It’s perfectly valid literature, Derek! Let me continue, we’re getting to the good parts—“

“Good parts? Oh no, no, no, no.” Derek tried to lunge over the table to grab the book. It only resulted in the empty mugs of tea and coffee to be knocked to the side, Erica moving her arm faster than Derek had moved. She bared her teeth, amusement and defiance. Derek bared his in turn, accepting the play, nose wrinkling. 

At his first growl, she jumped off her chair, the quilt falling down in heavy colored folds, and she ran off in only her sleep clothes, the book in her hand like a flag in garish colors. “ _His virile manhood robbed her of breath!_ ” 

Derek followed, arms extended to catch her. “Give me that!” Laughter answered. “Stop!”

The sparsely-furnished first floor was crossed and recrossed, Erica twisting around all his lunges. There was only a couch to hide behind, and that wouldn’t stop either of them for long. She was fast, had been getting faster since the eventful summer between sophomore and junior year. Facing each other in the space that separated the open kitchen from the living room area, there were only three ways to go: up, to the bedrooms and bathrooms, with windows large enough to jump from, out through the front and from there to the driveway and the cars, or out to the back porch, to the garden and the goats and the forest beyond. 

Erica went for the back, the book held over her head. “ _With a fluttering of flesh, he was sheathed to the hilt!_ ” 

Odessa got up with a harumpf to find another spot in the sun, away from the two werewolves and their path.

Derek almost got Erica when she opened the door, but she dropped low and rolled under his arm, before jumping off the porch and into the grass. She was almost to the vegetable garden and its messy rows when Derek jumped, managed to catch her shoulders and rolled both of them away, back into the short damp grass. Erica shrieked with laughter, so high that she was almost inaudible. 

The goats, in their enclosure, bleated in tentative interrogation. Derek finally grabbed the offending book, holding Erica’s wrists with one hand. He held it open, and quickly went through the page she had been reading from while she was squirming and kicking at him, showing her fangs and mock-biting at the air. 

“ _She was transported—_ … wait, since when are there tentacles involved?”

Erica burst into laughter again, curling around Derek’s hand and her wrists. He released some of the pressure, to let her move. She used the opportunity of his slackened grip to launch herself at him again, hard blunt fingers digging in his side, going for his weak points. The first tickle took him by surprise— he had expected a jab, something to hurt, not the expert amount of pressure that made him yelp and flinch to try to escape. Erica followed him. She rolled over him, going for the spot between his ribs, exposed now that his shirt had ridden up in the tussle. He half-whined, half-laughed. She kept going until he laughed properly, sitting on his thighs, the knees of her sleep pants already green from grass. 

They both stopped, breathed in. She lay on top of him, her head over her folded hands on his chest. She was almost too close for him to see her. The book was somewhere, in the grass, dew curling its edges, adding a soft papery smell to the morning. 

Erica traced a finger on the corner of Derek’s mouth. “I like you, like this, you know? I like you happy.” 

He wrapped his arms around her, tugged her up until her hair was in his face, so that he wouldn’t have to answer. It was easier, like that. She smelled of pack, of sleep, of morning food, of spilled tea and damp grass. 

He liked himself like this too. He would have never hoped— never even dreamed, of what he had now. It felt like so much sometimes, almost too much to properly grasp and understand, too much under his breastbone, so full he was sure the next breath he’d take his ribs would explode outward. The goats bleated, trying to call attention to themselves. There was a light breeze, just enough to rustle leaves and the dry grass around the vegetable garden’s raised beds. It didn’t smell yet of sun-warmed forest, of warmed compost in the back of the garden, and the sounds coming from the road and the town were too faraway to intrude. 

Then Erica broke the moment. “Now, if you ruined my novel, I’m gonna be pissed. There’s an amazing sex scene by the end when the chick talks the tentacle-dude into fucking her right in all her holes that makes me wet just thinking about it.” 

Derek rolled over her and spat the hair that had found his way in his mouth out, scowling. “I don’t know why I’m friend with you.” 

She grinned with all her teeth. “You said you’d teach me to drive, you gave me a magic quilt and you let me sleep in your bed. It’s all on you.” 

Odessa padded over to the edge of the back porch from inside and yawned before folding herself down, making a soft harumpf noise. 

“See? Your dog agrees with me. She’s judging you hardcore.” 

Derek rocked back to sit on his heels, shaking his head. His jeans were grass-green and dew-damp. “I get no respect.” 

Both Erica and Odessa laughed at him. 

He wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

**Author's Note:**

> Original updates, art, extras and more at [The Cheese 'Verse!](http://cheeseverse.tumblr.com)


End file.
